CHRISTOPHER CUOMO: It’s a hat with four words on it, but they can mean a lot to people. I’m talking about the president’s MAGA hat. Now, we hear of a chef in San Mateo, California, saying “you wear that hat into my place, you’re not getting service.” He tweeted stuff like this, saying, “MAGA hats are like white hoods except stupider because you see exactly who is wearing them.” Now he’s taken down some of those tweets, and there are reports the chef is getting threats. What’s right here? What’s wrong? What matters? Let’s bring in D-Lemon, how do you see it?

DON LEMON: I think people should be able to wear whatever they want, right? I don’t like banning. I don’t like boycotting. I don’t like people getting fired for what’s just making honest mistakes. But I do say your clothing tells a story, and if you’ve put certain symbols in your home or in front of your house, things tell stories, and you should be aware of the entire story they tell, not just the little part of it that you want to be told. But I don’t like the idea of banning someone for wearing a hat, but that hat, as we have said, it’s no secret, I told you about how I feel and many people perceive that hat.

CUOMO: Right. So, you have the legality and then–

LEMON: It’s legal, right? You’re the attorney.

CUOMO: You can refuse service. You know, no shirt, no shoes, no service. On that, you’d have a counter First Amendment argument. You’re chilling my rights. It’s a private place. Well, how is this any different than the baker with the cake? Well, that was about refusing service to a group of people that should be a protected class. And, unless you argue that Trump supporters should be a protected class, I don’t think you have much of an argument on that.

…

Here’s my problem on this issue. Ordinarily, I’d go down the line, look, “be bigger than that.” But I don’t want to fold to the trap of underselling the significance of the trigger of the expression to people. I think the more appropriate analogy to say is if people were wearing shirts that said, “I hate black people,” would he be okay to say, “Don’t come into my place with that?” And I think most people would be like, “yeah.”

LEMON: Yeah.

CUOMO: That’s how people like him see the MAGA hat, so does that make it okay? I think that’s the right question.

CNN and MSNBC collectively used the word “impeach” nearly 200 times on Friday before the Special Counsel’s office disputed a bombshell report by BuzzFeed News.

According to a Daily Caller review of TV clipping service Grabien, personalities on CNN and MSNBC used the words “Impeach,” “Impeachment,” or “Impeachable,” 179 times.

The review included only original Friday programming and ran up until each network learned that BuzzFeed’s report was in dispute — shortly before 8 pm.

CNN mentioned impeachment 82 times while MSNBC mentioned it a whopping 97 times.

While some anchors and pundits hedged that the BuzzFeed story could only lead to impeachment proceedings “if true,” others repeated the story more uncritically and suggested that the president would be forced to resign and might even face obstruction of justice charges.

MSNBC’s Katy Tur, for example, stated at the top of her show that “Donald Trump is facing themost damming report to date forhis presidency.A story that could lead to hisimpeachment.”

Both outlets also interviewed a number of Democratic congresspeople to get their thoughts on the possibility of impeachment of the president. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, for example, spoke to Democratic Rep. Jim Himes about the implications of the BuzzFeed report if it turned out to be verified, while MSNBC host Chris Matthews brought on Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu.

Matthews was perhaps the most eager cable television host to prop up BuzzFeed’s report, even insisting after the Special Counsel’s office’s statement that, “not accurate … it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

BuzzFeed’s story, dependent on two anonymous sources, alleged that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was directed by President Donald Trump to lie about business deals in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.

A spokesperson for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team disputed the crux of the report within 24 hours of its publication, stating, “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”

A spokesperson for special counsel Robert Mueller’s office released a statement Friday disputing a BuzzFeed report alleging President Donald Trump directed his former attorney Michael Cohen to make false statements to Congress regarding a proposed real estate deal in Russia.

“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” special counsel spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement.

BuzzFeed, citing two unidentified law enforcement officials, alleged in a Thursday evening report that President Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress and that he regularly briefed the president and his family on the Trump Tower project in Moscow. BuzzFeed claimed Cohen told Mueller that President Trump personally instructed him to lie about the timing of the project in order to obscure Trump’s involvement. No other news organization was able to confirm the report nearly 24 hours after it’s publication.

Further, BuzzFeed said Mueller’s investigators learned about President Trump’s directive “through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.” The report says Cohen then acknowledged Trump’s instructions when he was interviewed by the Mueller team. “We are continuing to report and determine what the special counsel is disputing. We remain confident in the accuracy of our report,” Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, said in a statement on the special counsel’s dispute of its reportage.

The special counsel’s statement came hours after several prominent news organizations, including Breitbart News, expressed deep skepticism about the report. In a Friday morning opinion-editorial, Breitbart News’s John Nolte wrote that report’s co-author, Jason Leopold, has gotten in hot water for erroneous reporting. Columbia Journalism Review has described Leopold “serial fabulist,” who falsely claimed Karl Rove would be indicted for leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name to the media. Further, Nolte also pointed out that President Trump is not an avid user of email or text messages — thus leaving little other means to corroborate BuzzFeed’s story. Speaking with CNN’s New Day Friday morning, Leopold’s co-author, Anthony Cormier, stood by the report, though he did admit he had “not personally” seen the underlying evidence.

Earlier Friday, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said “any suggestion — from any source — that the President counseled Michael Cohen to lie is categorically false.” In addition, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the allegation “absolutely ridiculous.”

The report comes as House Democrats have promised a thorough look into Trump’s ties to Russia, and as Mueller is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and contacts with the Trump campaign.

Giuliani noted that Cohen had pleaded guilty to lying and quoted federal prosecutors in New York who chastised him for a “pattern of lies and dishonesty over an extended period of time.” Mueller’s team, however, has called him a credible witness.

“Today’s claims are just more made-up lies born of Michael Cohen’s malice and desperation,” Giuliani said in a statement.

Lanny Davis, a Cohen adviser, declined to comment on the matter. Though Republicans stayed mostly silent, two Democrat committee chairmen in the House vowed to launch inquiries.

Reacting to the report, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) pledged to “do what’s necessary to find out” if the report was true. He said the allegation that President Trump directed Cohen to lie in his 2017 testimony “in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date.”

Adam Schiff

✔@RepAdamSchiff

The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date. We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.

BuzzFeed News

✔@BuzzFeedNews

BREAKING: President Trump personally directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in order to obscure his involvement. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …

Calling the allegations a “counterintelligence concern of the greatest magnitude,” Schiff said his committee had already been working to secure witness testimony and documents related to the Moscow deal. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a fellow House Intelligence Committee member demanded that the president resign or be impeachment, once again, contingent upon the report’s accuracy.

“If the @BuzzFeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached,” the lawmaker tweeted.

Joaquin Castro

✔@JoaquinCastrotx

If the @BuzzFeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached.

Some of President Trump’s closest allies and media boosters, including his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., mocked BuzzFeed on social media over its now-dispute story:

Donald Trump Jr.

✔@DonaldJTrumpJr

BuzzFeed News

✔@BuzzFeedNews

UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …

UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc …

If the media does not spend — minute for minute — the same amount of time on the death of the latest #FakeNews from @BuzzFeed (RIP) that they did speculating about “IF IT’S TRUE !” then they should quit even pretending to be unbiased. What a disgrace. #RIPbuzzfeed

The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow said he turned down the chance to report parts of BuzzFeed’s report, citing a key source who repeatedly disputed the allegation that the president asked Cohen to lie before Congress.

Ronan Farrow

✔@RonanFarrow

I can’t speak to Buzzfeed’s sourcing, but, for what it’s worth, I declined to run with parts of the narrative they conveyed based on a source central to the story repeatedly disputing the idea that Trump directly issued orders of that kind.

In November, Cohen stated in a guilty plea that he lied to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal he pursued on President Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 Republican campaign. He claimed he lied to be consistent with President Trump’s “political messaging.”

Cohen was sentenced December 12 to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to several charges, including campaign finance violations and making false statements to Congress. Prior to his sentencing, Federal prosecutors in Manhattan asked a judge to sentence Cohen to a “substantial term of imprisonment,” arguing that he had been motivated by “personal greed.”

Reacting to Cohen’s plea, President Trump called Cohen a “weak person” who was lying to get a lighter sentence and stressed that the real estate deal at issue was never a secret and never executed. Giuliani said that Cohen was a “proven liar” and that Trump’s business organization had voluntarily given Mueller the documents cited in the guilty plea “because there was nothing to hide.”

“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it,” the president said of pursuing the project. “I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?”

Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on February 7 about his work history with President Trump.

Who can argue if Democrats hate this country? They want to protect other countries but not this country.

The spending bills proposed by House Democrats to end the partial government shutdown offer no funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, but provide over $12 billion more in foreign aid than the Trump administration requested, according to a statement on Thursday from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The statement warned the new House Democrat majority of President Trump’s intention to veto the bills, noting that the administration “cannot accept legislation that provides unnecessary funding for wasteful programs while ignoring the Nation’s urgent border security needs.”

The statement reiterated President Trump’s request for “at least $5 billion for border security” and asserted that the Democrats’ proposal “does not come close to providing these necessary investments and authorities.”

The White House then highlighted the billions in funding the Democrats are offering for “unnecessary programs at excessive levels” beyond what the Trump administration requested, including:

$12 billion more for “international affairs programs,” including $2.9 billion more “for economic and development assistance, including funding for the West Bank/Gaza, Syria, and Pakistan, where our foreign aid is either frozen or under review.”

$700 million more than requested for the United Nations, including restored funding for the United Nation’s Population Fund, which would undermine the administration’s Mexico City Policy that bars the use of taxpayer dollars for foreign organizations that “promote or perform abortions.”

Approximately $2 billion more than requested for the Environmental Protection Agency

$7.1 billion more than the administration requested for Housing and Urban Development programs

The statement’s full passage regarding the Democrats’ additional funding reads:

The six bills provided for under H.R. 21 provide funding at levels nearly 20 percent higher than the President’s FY 2019 Budget. For instance, H.R. 21 provides $12 billion more for international affairs programs, 29 percent higher than the President’s request. This includes $2.9 billion more than the request for economic and development assistance, including funding for the West Bank/Gaza, Syria, and Pakistan, where our foreign aid is either frozen or under review. It includes $700 million more than requested for the United Nations, including restoring funding for the United Nations Population Fund. The bill would also undermine the President’s Mexico City Policy (Presidential Memorandum of January 23, 2017), which prohibits the funding of foreign nongovernmental organizations that promote or perform abortions. Further, H.R. 21 includes approximately $2 billion in excessive Environmental Protection Agency funding, providing funds beyond the Agency’s core mission and including funding for programs that can and should be executed at the local level. The bill also includes substantial unrequested funding for HUD programs, including $7.1 billion above the FY 2019 Budget request for HUD rental assistance programs. These and other excessive spending items makes the lack of adequate border funding in the combined package all the more unacceptable.

“The administration looks forward to working with the Congress to enact appropriations that will adequately secure the Nation’s borders and get the federal government back to work for the American people as soon as possible,” the statement concluded.

Update: The Democrat spending bills passed the House on Thursday night. The first bill, a continuing resolution to fund the Department of Homeland Security until February 8, passed by 239-192. The bill would “keep border security funding at $1.3 billion, providing no new funding for the barrier along the southern border,” the Hill reports. The second bill to fund the other six agencies through September passed by 241-190.

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the likely next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said President Donald Trump might “face the real prospect of jail time” in light of charges against his personal attorney, Michael Cohen for illegal payments during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Schiff said, “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people. The bigger pardon question may come down the road, as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”

He is right the Bob Mueller investigation is nothing but a destruction project to destroy Donald Trump. There is no such thing as justice in America for the rich and powerful.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich laid into special counsel Robert Mueller on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday night, labeling the Russia probe a “Trump destruction project.”

Gingrich’s observation came in response to the sentencing recommendation Mueller made earlier this week regarding President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

“Mueller is not involved in a investigation,” Gingrich charged. “Mueller has a Trump destruction project. He brought on a team, all of them dedicated to destroying Trump. They have done everything they could to destroy Trump.”

Gingrich explained, “You basically threaten somebody and say, ‘I’m going to bankrupt you. I’m going to put your son in jail. I’m going to charge you with so many different crimes, you’ll never get out from under it. Now would you like to talk?’”

ABC News reported Flynn put his home in Alexandria, Virginia up for sale last spring to pay his mounting legal bills.

Additionally, a month before entering into a plea agreement with Mueller in December 2017, the retired general reportedly expressed concern about his son being prosecuted for failing to register in relation to consulting work the two did for foreign entities, according to Forbes.

“It has nothing to do with the truth. It has nothing to do with justice,” Gingrich alleged.

He predicted, “Historians one day will comment that this was one of the most extraordinary efforts to undo the will of the American people by an established bureaucracy, and its establishment friends, that we’ve seen in all of American history.”

Hannity then raised the issue of new reporting by The Hill’s John Solomon indicating that former FBI Director James Comey was in email exchanges with other top DOJ officials and FBI investigators, which provides “the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

“The email exchanges show the FBI was aware — before it secured the now-infamous warrant (to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page) — that there were intelligence community concerns about the reliability of the main evidence used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier,” wrote Solomon.

Gingrich responded, “You had the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation actively trying to destroy a presidential candidate.”

He argued that Comey and others who were involved in the efforts to undermine Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, “operated on a premise … Hillary was going to win. So they never thought this would come to light. They thought they were helping the winner.”

Gingrich believes Mueller has taken up the banner and reiterated that the special counsel’s team is “actively trying to destroy the President of the United States.”

“And I know it’s frustrating but the fact is, this is a clear cut drama. They hate him, they want to destroy him, it has nothing to do with the truth and nothing to do with the law.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that if Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker does not recuse himself from oversight of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, then Democrats will seek to tie protections for the investigation into the spending bill.

“We Democrats, House and Senate, will attempt to add to must-pass legislation, in this case the spending bill, legislation that would prevent Mr. Whitaker from interfering with the Mueller investigation” should Whitaker not recuse, Schumer said Sunday during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Schumer said he was concerned about the past statements Whitaker made as a commentator on CNN about the investigation. Whitaker has argued that cutting Mueller’s budget would be a way to end the probe, that investigating President Trump’s finances would be a “red line” and that he believes there was “no collusion” between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Separated at birth.

“The appointment of Mr. Whitaker should concern every American – Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative – who believes in rule of law and justice,” Schumer said.” “He has already prejudged the Mueller situation. If he stays there, he will create a constitutional crisis by inhibiting Mueller or firing Mueller, so Congress has to act.”

Schumer, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other key Democrats, are sending a letter to Lee Lofthus, the top ethics officer at the Justice Department, to question Lofthus if he had advised Whitaker to recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller probe.

Schumer, however, stopped short of saying he would risk a government shutdown if Mueller protection’s weren’t added to a spending bill.

What about Eric Holder’s corruption when he was over the DOJ.

“I believe there will be enough of our Republican colleagues who will join us. There’s no reason we shouldn’t add this and avoid a constitutional crisis,” Schumer said. “We’ll see what happens down the road.”

With the pushback from top Democrats, numerous Republican lawmakers have come to Whitaker’s defense. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Whitaker was “appointed legally” and there was no reason for him to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation.

“You don’t recuse somebody because they have opinions different than the people they’re overseeing,” Graham said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “The bottom line here is Mueller will be allowed to do the job without political interference by Mr. Whitaker.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., who is likely to take over as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee come January, said on Sunday that if Whitaker doesn’t recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation, then the acting attorney general will be subpoenaed by the panel.

“Our very first witness after January 3, we will subpoena, or we will summon, if necessary subpoena, Mr. Whitaker,” Nadler said on “State of the Union.” “The questions we will ask him will be about his expressed hostility to the investigation.”

Nadler added: “How he can possibly supervise it when he’s expressed, when he’s come out and said that the investigation is invalid.”

The ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said that protecting Mueller’s investigation will be a top priority should he take over as the panel’s chair come January.

“Well, the very first thing, obviously, is to protect the Mueller investigation. The President’s dismissal of Attorney General Sessions and his appointment of Whitaker, who’s a complete political lackey, is a real threat to the integrity of that investigation,” he said, adding that the investigation is “of utmost importance.”